Moving Traditions in the news.

By Marjorie Ingall, Tablet, February 1, 2019

The news abounds with stories of young white men behaving abominably. Privileged private-school boys taunting a Native American activist, donning blackface. Athletes repeatedly accused of sexual assault, without long-term consequences. Mothers fiercely defending college-age sons who’ve been suspended or expelled from college for sexual misbehavior. Men exploding in social media fury at a razor commercial (a razor commercial!) for its vile offense of depicting men standing up to bullying, stepping in to stop sexual harassment, and rejecting the notion that “boys will be boys.”

Young Jewish men aren’t exempt from such toxicity. I will never forget my teenage daughter telling me about boys in her progressive Jewish summer camp chanting “fag, fag, fag” to torment another boy. Or about the boy at camp who, when challenged about his belief that women didn’t become CEOs because they weren’t as smart as men, told a girl, “Just kill yourself.” (And no one—no tween or teen camper, no teen or 20-something counselor—did anything to help.) All too often, we hear of situations in which boys who aren’t bullies fail to be upstanders, the term now used to differentiate passive bystanders and active helpers.

So, in a climate of pussy-grabbing and fury, how do we raise Jewish boys who’ll grow into good guys? How do we encourage them to challenge poisonous old-school ideas of masculinity?

Once a week, Isaac Santelli makes his way to a public school on Chicago’s South Side, where he volunteers teaching high school students about some of the most freighted words imaginable for young people today: sexuality, consent and communication.

“If kids can sense that you are uncomfortable talking about this, they’re already uncomfortable,” said Santelli, a junior at the University of Chicago. Luckily for his students, conversations about gender and consent are natural for Santelli, thanks to a program called Shevet that he participated in as a teenager.

As the #MeToo movement has encouraged women from across the country to come forward with stories of sexual harassment and assault, Jewish organizations are trying to help men and boys have conversations about these sensitive topics with a grounding in Jewish sources.

By Rabbi Daniel Brenner, eJewishPhilanthropy, October 30, 2018

In the wake of #metoo, many families are questioning the practice of hiring young women to fawn over thirteen-year-old boys, but Vegas-style b’nai mitzvah celebrations continue to grab the headlines and to give pre-teens grandiose ideas about the party. Meanwhile, a quiet revolution is taking place in how today’s families are approaching the rite of passage of b’nai mitzvah. Two years ago, I sat with podcast producer Michele Siegel (Slate, The New York Times, and WNYC) and podcast host Sara Ivry (Vox Tablet) discussing the idea of exploring the contemporary b’nai mitzvah experience, untangling the complexities of gender, culture, class, and Jewish identity as they present themselves in family celebrations across the United States, and exploring the rite of passage as a contemporary threshold where a child doesn’t become an adult, but a teen.

By Josefin Dolsten, JTA, October 22, 2018

When Rabbi Tamara Cohen started working four years ago as the chief of innovation at Moving Traditions, she was seeking ways to cater to transgender youths. The organization had been running discussion groups for Jewish girls since 2002 and boys since 2010. It launched the Tzelem group for transgender teens last year as an alternative to the Rosh Hodesh girls group and Shevet boys group.

Tzelem, meaning “image” in Hebrew, refers to the biblical notion that all humans are created in the image of God.

Like Moving Traditions’ other groups, Tzelem offers discussions that allows to articulate their deepest concerns in a safe and Jewish setting.

By Oren Peleg, Jewish Journal October 3, 2018

As pre-teens get older, communication gets more difficult. When the Jewish community can create a framework for dialogue and a space where they can hear each other and have empathy for one another, that’s crucial. — Rabbi Daniel Brenner

By Julie Zauzmer, The Washington Post, July 14, 2018

This summer, in the #MeToo era, the Foundation for Jewish Camp is conducting a nationwide training program to prevent sexual harassment at Jewish overnight camps, which about 70,000 children attend each summer.

By Selah Maya Zighelboim, Jewish Exponent, June 6, 2018

As a former Jewish summer camper, Moving Traditions CEO Deborah Meyer said camp was a place where she developed long-lasting friendships and an intense connection to Jewish life.

But it was also a place where she remembers some inappropriate behavior between counselors.

“The broader society, the broader culture seeps into summer camp,” Meyer said. “Even camps with really good policies still have human beings, especially counselors, who are coming with their good intentions, but are bringing in some of the norms from the wider culture around hook-up and objectification and sexualization, and just ways of relating that are not necessarily really thought through in terms of how to create a healthy and safe space for younger teens and preteens and younger children.”

…Summer camp is where many of us form our deepest and longest-lasting relationships. It is often rightly held up as a healthy oasis, an alternative to the social pressures of popular culture, including a much-needed break from life driven by screens.

And yet, we bring all of our cultural norms and expectations with us to camp. Normative discriminatory or biased attitudes toward gender, sex and power can lead to inappropriate behavior mirroring the outside world, from all levels – administration, counselors and campers….